Andrea Höst: The Sleeping Life

"I didn’t write them like that," Auri said, staring down at the circle of glowing, snowflake shapes.

Fallon, spirits sinking, didn’t doubt it. Just like the floorboards they were written upon, the sigils had been twisted into spirals by the miscasting. The light would have made them hard enough to read: the distortion made it near-impossible.

"If I could trace them out, I suppose," he said, trying to puzzle out the nearest sigil. Three spokes, so it would be an action…

"Don’t be stupid." Auri, avoiding the Sigillic, crossed to tug on his arm. "You can’t maintain a casting like this nearly—" She broke off, and went back to her chair, kneeling down to peer underneath it.

"What?"

"Come see."

Her cheek was shining blue, reflecting a strong light source beneath the chair. Fallon hurried to poke his nose around the other side of the chair’s leg, and found that the light was coming from the base of the chair, from a sphere embedded into the wood.

"I did it after all," Auri said, reaching out to stroke the curve before Fallon could object. "It’s warm."

"I don’t think that’s a focus," Fallon said. "It looks dark, not clear."

"What else could it be? I read that Lady Rennyn’s focus is black. Maybe I accidentally summoned the way she did." She smiled, and poked the sphere again. "It feels good."

Resting back on his heels, Fallon murmured the cut-off for the detect Sigillic. "I guess this is progress. I’ll dig it out in the morning."

"And then go find out what you can about Lady Rennyn’s students."

"That too, for all the good it’ll do me. None of them are in the city."

"They’ll have to come back for her annunciation as Duchess. You can do it, Fallon."

He’d have to. Without being able to read the structure of Auri’s Sigillic, he had little chance of understanding just what had gone wrong. And even if he stumbled upon a solution, his ability to cast was greatly limited by the strain Auri constantly placed on him. Nor would it be sufficient to somehow enlist the help of his teachers, or the Hand mages, or even the Grand Magister. He needed an expert in the Eferum, and there was only one mage considered so brilliant, so revolutionary, so sheerly powerful, that she would have any hope of saving a girl trapped in a dream he couldn’t admit to.

If Auri was ever to find her way back to this world, they needed Rennyn Claire.

Kendall Stockton returned to Captain Faille’s quarters to discover her so-called teacher standing daydreaming on a footstool while a pair of dressmakers scuffled around her feet fooling with her hem. Really, there were times Rennyn Claire acted almost as silly as she’d pretended to be when Kendall had met her.

Not bothering to point out the obvious to someone who couldn’t be trusted with stairs and frequently came over dizzy and had to sit down, Kendall instead looked over the dress.

"It’s not as fancy as I expected," she said, considering the floaty, dark blue sleeves and the tiny silver flowers embroidered on the broad black waistband. Not bad, though it failed hide that Rennyn was still too thin, and it was cut low enough to show neck and shoulders. Rennyn didn’t exactly try to hide her throat, but she rarely wore anything that gave a good look at the scar left by her demon uncle. "Wasn’t it supposed to be green?"

"This is just for today’s audience." Rennyn glanced down at her dress as if she hadn’t really thought about it yet. She was the type who would wear exactly the same thing every day, if no-one poked at her.

This dress was a good deal more like what a nearly-Duchess would wear than the plain skirt, blouse and jacket Rennyn usually went about in, but she still didn’t look as expensive as most of the ladies Kendall had glimpsed flitting through the palace. Her teacher’s long black hair was caught back from the sides with a dark ribbon and the rest hung down her back same as always—she never tried to do anything with it. If Kendall had hair so nice and straight, instead of a mop of dirty blonde curls, she wasn’t sure she would bind it up in braids either. Though it was probably just that all the braiding the Court ladies liked was too much effort for Rennyn at the moment.

"How long have you been standing on that?" Kendall asked, handing Rennyn the newssheet she’d been carrying.

"Not long. For this dress." Rennyn’s smile was totally unconvincing. She glanced down at the newssheet and added: "Why does everyone draw me so short?"

While Rennyn wasn’t as unnecessarily tall as her husband, she definitely wasn’t small, so the most likely reason was the people making the newssheet didn’t care. The picture was nothing new: a drawing of a black-haired, dark-eyed woman dangling from puppet-strings held by a shadowy figure with claws, his arms and legs all long and spidery. Rennyn and her Kellian husband Captain Faille. While the picture properly got across the idea that Captain Faille was a scary man, anyone who thought Rennyn the least bit like a puppet really didn’t have a clue.

Kendall didn’t know why her teacher even bothered to read the sheets, though she did privately feel Rennyn had been out of her head, or at least not thinking things through, when she’d insisted on marrying Captain Faille before she’d even been able to get out of her sick bed. People had already distrusted the Kellian for being descended from magical constructs called golems, and not properly human. When the Black Queen—who had centuries ago created the first Kellian—had taken control of their descendants during her attempted return, every suspicion seemed confirmed, for all that the Kellian had had no choice in the matter. A ridiculously powerful mage like Rennyn Claire up and marrying one—in an evening ceremony in the infirmary with the bride propped into a sitting position, her face still black with bruises—well, of course people would say she’d been taken advantage of and start making a fuss. Rennyn was too used to acting like the Boss of the World to imagine anyone would think she could be bullied into getting married.

Kendall noticed the blue sleeves had acquired a distinct tilt. "You need to sit down now."

Rennyn straightened. Kendall just caught her change of expression, but as usual her teacher immediately tried to hide how upset not being able to do anything much made her. "Can you finish it with me sitting down?" she asked the dressmakers.

"Of course, Your Grace. I’ve pinned the level."

Rennyn needed help stepping down off the stool, and blinked and swayed a bit more while Kendall kept her upright. Knowing the looks she’d get if she let Her High and Mightiness fall over, Kendall made sure to keep hold of her elbow until she’d settled in one of the chairs by the window.

"It won’t be much longer, Your Grace," said one of the dressmakers: the older, less-snooty one who looked like a pigeon stuffed into ruby silk. No-one was supposed to call Rennyn Your Grace yet—not officially—but a lot of people did anyway. The huge amount Rennyn was spending on too many clothes—not just for herself but for her brother and husband, and for Kendall and her fellow student Sukata as well—made the dressmaker extra keen to please. Rennyn probably didn’t even notice, since she had her eyes closed and was taking long, deep breaths. She was supposed to be having an audience with the Queen that morning, and should have known better than to tire herself out before she even reached the Old Palace.

After a while she opened her eyes and began annoying herself with the newssheet again, carefully reading all of a long playbill for something called "The Black Queen". How a bunch of players could hope to Reveal All about the Return of Queen Solace Kendall didn’t know, and wondered if there was any way she could sneak off to see them try.